Are honest Contributors disappearing, benefiting the translation software?

General Discussion
28

Actually while cheking the “Perks”, I discovered something that I didn’t know. When you have 1,000 subs, you can get access to Viki original, so that’s also to consider.

And that’s why I mentionned historical chinese drama as well, since parts can go up to 200 subs and with around 6 episodes each week, you can have a decent amount of subs done. (And there are rarely many people in an historical team, so you can probably do like 2 parts in an episode, with gtranslation, that’s quite fast. So let’s just imagine if that person is in two or three dramas… 3,000 subs in no time)

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29

Yass! Post-editing of a machine translation is time-consuming at the highest! Depending on the drama, an honest translator may take over an hour to translate a ten-minute part with accuracy. The post-editing can go as far as an entire day (assuming the proofreader/editor tries not to re-translate everything from scratch)!

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30

My recommendation is to do what I always did when editing bad subtitles I DELETED the whole thing [(subtitle)], and started from a clean slate. The Logic? The person used a goglellator/bot suggestion (whatever) there is a mess there that can’t be fixed bc the whole thing is crap. On that note, let’s just give our expertise in the matter, and not deal with the aggravation of fixing something that was never fixable in the first place.

What happened to me was that when I tried to leave part of the [person’s/subber subtitle] I ended up messing the past tense and some other stuff, and that’s when I finally put my foot down and deleted everything. But Back then, I was so nice I would give the person via message the correct subtitle in ENGLISH so the sub would stay in the subber’s name although I did all the work. I would also advice them to take notes in a notebook to improve their writing in English. Most were ungrateful and would criticize me instead of thanking me. Talking about ungrateful people here. I stopped doing that after a while, and learned a lesson the hard way, that sometimes it doesn’t pay to be nice to certain ppl.

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31

That would be ideal, but your average Moderator doesn’t have the permissions necessary to delete the translation for a whole episode in bulk. I think only a CM has that privilege?

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33

I only know that CMs can delete a whole episode with subs in any language.
A Mod has no chance

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34

This thread throws light on this discussion, and throws a wrench in it! :neutral_face:
Seems they got the green light :traffic_light::vertical_traffic_light:putting up a :stop_sign: sign, or light, we’ve got to go to the root!

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35

I believe she means replacing the entire segment with a new translation, not just fixing a part of it.

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36

We talking years back, and I was only editing the work of certain subbers; not the whole episode. I deleted a subtitle that was wrong the whole English subtitle (only), nothing else.

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@bozoli

You misunderstood what I wrote; it was about a subtitle. I deleted the subtitle done wrong. I was editing a subtitle not the whole episode. I read the sentence and I wrote thing but before that I emphasized editing bad subtiles so I’m guessing the s plural in subtitles; created all the confusion?

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38

@justine_desmoulins

I remembered something that could be crucial to what’s going on in here. I saw an article where they wrote that some people do get paid here, and someone who no longer is in ‘‘speaking’’ terms with me said; that they were getting paid ONE CENT/ ONE PENNY per segment. Back then, I asked myself who would work for a measly penny when it takes an hour just to sub a 10 minute section/episode? Little did I know the PRE-Subs were going to make it easy for some to be earning more pennies a day, and turning them into dollars maybe? THAT’S a Theory about why we have ppl here recruiting as subbers ppl that are making such bad subtitles with bad grammar and the likes. Although I believe many of those are really doing it to get the QC status to get to see the dramas for free (maybe they can’t afford to pay?)

Then, I see this Topic and I know you are working in a pre subbed drama https://www.viki.com/tv/37627c-river-where-the-moon-rises?q=whwere as the English and French moderator, you did a gorgeous page cover (thank you for your hard work). I don’t know why my comment that the drama was pre subbed got deleted though (I wrote that a while ago). The subs in the drama are aligned in time/era , and proper words are used in the drama, not modern words like flipping I saw in another drama. YOU and your team provided good quality in the drama and this site should keep ppl like you that is giving quality work and not low quality subtitles MAYBE to earn that ONE PENNY? DON’T forget is just a THEORY. .

I’ve been wanting to make sense of what’s going on in here lately. It’s the ONLY logical reason for having a person working in a drama that learned Spanish in College but can only give translation from Google translate or wherever he/she is using (giving very low quality subs). Oddly enough, this is happening more often in those long traditional Chinese dramas. I also see many of these 4 main people in the teams working in whatever comes their way whether is Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Shows, they grab everything and anything.

The pattern I saw in certain contribution page that they edited 3 out of the 10 subs that were badly translated. I’m guessing since they have to rush to their other many dramas they are working on; there is so much they can do. DON’T GET ME WRONG. It might not be to earn that one penny since the person who told me that, might have made that up bc I couldn’t find any other source or the article where it said some ppl do get paid here for subs (I saw that a year back or more?) I wished I had copied the article and saved it but I didn’t.

IN ALL HONESTY, if we don’t get to the source of why this is happening here now then, we will loose honest contributors like YOU and MANY OTHERS too that do their volunteer work at this RakutenViki site to provide the good quality subtitles that they are so proud of providing FOR FREE volunteer work with dedication and love for the site. This can be resolved before it affects the integrity of this site bc VOLUNTEER WORK deserves the same respect and dedication as any PAYING JOB. If the ulterior motive doesn’t include commitment from the volunteer then, they don’t deserve to be in a team to mess/damage what to me has been for a long time one of the best site for viewers from all over the world.

In my opinion the higher ups need to look into this and check how the quality of work is been affected by this new thing going on in here. I myself have seen badly segmented/subbed dramas and shows, and I was wondering why this was happening so much now, when we were doing so well in regards to quality of segments and subtitles IN ANY/EVERY LANGUAGE. I have seen comments in Portuguese and other language complaining that the sentence was translated wrong that they could have done a better job etc…

Please MR. CEO hope you can take a minute of your time and stop this before it affects quality and integrity kept for so many years at this site. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION.

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39

Actually, I was aware of the fact that Viki used Professional subtitlers to help out in some drama but only in english. I don’t know if that’s still the case though. But I wasn’t as informed as to know their rates. I think we already had this conversation on Viki, but they probably will never pay anything else than english professional. That would be too costly, and they don’t have that money to spend. (That’s also why they’re training a bot)

I don’t think those people are after money. I think of them young students not knowing how things works. (Who potentially could be attracted to Viki pass, but from me to you, I don’t think it’s that necessary to have a Viki pass and I’m not sure they’re after it). So What’s the interest in spending hours copy-pasting lines in Viki? I’m still wondering. Maybe they just want to be part of something, to have the feeling of being useful… Who knows.

Truthfully and I’m not trying to take Viki’s side, I think it’s probably hard to find out what’s right and what’s wrong. (They’re so many languages, they can’t simply speak each language, and who are they supposed to trust?) What would be best would be to have a representative on Viki for each language, (at least the most popular), who could double check and take action. But We’ve heard so many times how they have few manpower, and the higher-ups seem unlikely to recruit.

Still, I agree with you that they should take things in hands, a single newsletter reminding not to use translation softwares won’t be enough. But we (contributors) have no real power on that topic. Even when we report abusive behavior, nothing happen (or it rarely happens), so that’s kind of depressing.

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40

There are agencies and websites like ProZ where you can find the right people to do this part. Other streaming services do that. It is not very different from what we see here. You have a Project Manager (Our CM), a Chief Editor (Moderator) who is responsible for gathering the team and distribute roles (translation only?/ Segmenter - that we call sync - / both?), a translator team, a proofreader team.

They could start with their original series. Maybe for 3 or 4 languages with more demand. Market research wouldn’t be that hard with the amount of data that already have.

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41

I agree; start with the language that are more in demand here.

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42

That’s new :joy: :

image
https://www.viki.com/tv/35834c-come-and-hug-me

So that’s where we’re heading? Is it now worth it to complain about auto subtitles? :roll_eyes::expressionless:

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43

If I’m not mistaken, after the volunteer strike they had said that Viki would auto-translated the most popular languages until those are not filled in properly (by human translators)? I seem to remember something along those lines. :thinking:

44

I do remember that as well, but It was if there was no one who could translate that show. I don’t see any team on that drama, so of course if you’re not looking for spanish moderators, portuguese moderators and french moderators, you won’t find it.

Who’s going to judge the quality of these subtitles?

And I do think they’ve got double standards, we’re not allowing automated subtitles from external sources, because of the bad quality, but we’ll put our own that are also bad quality. But since it’s our subtitles, that’s fine.

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45

Huh wasn’t that Kdrama licensed for our region (Europe) before? I find it odd that it never had subs in those languages as it’s an older kdrama that has been on yt since it’s broadcast.

But maybe I’m confused with an other kdrama and this one was never licensed for Europe.

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46

Actually, I’ve just double checked, and it seems that it’s going to be licenced in Europe as well.
But the question of quality remains. Licence-wise, Kocowa probably have some issue with subtitlers translating, but they’re agreeing on seeing their drama botched in three languages… That’s odd.

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47

I think this is how most dramas/shows/movies will end up here at viki site. No mention of teams and in regards to review and comments, I still can’t submit reviews (I’m planning to delete all my reviews in my profile anyway). I think they want to remove the reviews section bc it will only be about complaints of bad subtitles etc…(I’m guessing).

I checked the Spanish subtitles on episode 1 for at least the first 10 minutes and is a bit of a disaster. They are using in Spanish informal speech when it should be formal. I recognize the way they translating that drama and that’s no AI or bot translation. I don’t see the need to hide the team now, and is so weird you found this drama like that. I did see weird stuff going on here, and that is; dramas that were translated long time ago, and now there is a new team ‘‘working’’ on them like it was just translated recently when in reality I saw that drama back in 2013 here at this site fully subbed.

Forgot to mention that the new thing here shows are segmented now by non Ninja Academy Badge ppl. with very disastrous consequences bc the segments are so crappy. I wonder, how are they getting away with this? Why this has been allowed to happen in here? What is really going on in here? Now, is not only pre-subbed dramas/shows issues but segments issues, too. If they are fixing the shows/dramas etc…segments; why are they in worse condition than before? Something is so wrong here if the quality of this site is going to be affected, instead of improving. It makes no sense whatsoever.

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48

I saw that as well that in some teams seggers didnt have propper training by NSSA or Seg101. Usually those channels are managed by newbie CM who either don’t know or maybe don’t care. I decided to not give advise unless I’m asked for advise because not every new CM liked my good intentions and some where even offended.

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